Keith Antonio Davis (Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office)
A 61-year-old man in Florida is facing a possible life sentence after he allegedly admitted to brutally killing his 49-year-old wife, strangling her to death with her purse strap before returning to the body post-mortem and sticking a kitchen knife in her chest.
Keith Antonio Davis was taken into custody late last month and charged with one count of first-degree premeditated murder in the slaying of Sonya Evette White, court documents reviewed by Law&Crime show.
According to a probable cause affidavit, officers with the West Palm Beach Police Department on Sept. 25 responded to a call from the victim’s daughter, who reported that her mother had not answered any of her calls or text messages for several days, which she described as being “very suspicious and out of the ordinary.” She said she went to the apartment her mother shared with Davis and found it was locked and no one was answering the door.
The daughter at about 7:04 p.m. on Sept. 27 returned to her mother’s apartment located in the 1700 block of North Congress Avenue with officers from the West Palm Beach Police Department and a locksmith to perform a welfare check on her mother. The locksmith said the deadbolts to the door had been damaged and were not properly functioning. Eventually, they were able to get in by unlocking a door in the rear of the apartment where an adult female — later identified as White — was found lying on the floor in the kitchen, “obviously dead,” police said.
Investigators said that White had “obvious stab wounds to the chest” and noted that there was a “large kitchen knife laying on top of her chest.” She had suffered at least two stab wounds to the chest.
Police stated there were no signs of forced entry into the home and the victim’s cellphone and her husband were both missing.
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Investigators on Sept. 28 learned that Davis had been arrested by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office and a West Palm Beach detective was at the sheriff’s office to greet Davis upon his release from custody.
According to the affidavit, when the detective introduced himself to Davis, he said that Davis immediately, “turned around, put his hands behind his back and stated, ‘Let’s go…’” The detective said he also recorded Davis saying, “It was all an accident, that incident with my wife.”
Davis then agreed to sit down for a post-Miranda interview with investigators.
“Davis told [detectives] he and Mrs. White had been smoking crack cocaine on Sept. 24 (Sunday), when Mrs. White began to order him to leave. Davis claimed he covered Mrs. White’s mouth to silence her, then choked her, then wrapped her purse strap around her neck and choked her until she was dead,” police wrote in the document. “Davis claimed he then sat down, watched television, went back to Mrs. White’s body, pulled a knife from a drawer in the kitchen and stabbed her in the chest with the knife.”
Davis then allegedly told police, “I did what I had to do, because she had pulled same knife on me before,” the affidavit states.
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